Zero trust architecture for Common Ground applications

An Abstract

SonicBee, the Common Ground movement, VNG and the Municipality of The Hague together developed innovation in the field of access management. This brings opportunities for interoperability between municipalities, citizens, businesses, and chain partners and evolved from the need for a new, modern joint information facility for the exchange of data. This workshop provides insights into the architecture, applications and associated innovative approach to access governance based on Zero Trust and PBAC (Policy Based Access Control) principles.

The current system for data exchange in municipalities makes it difficult to innovate quickly and flexibly, to comply with privacy legislation and to handle data efficiently. This stands in the way of improving municipal services. The Common Ground movement is looking at innovation opportunities for greater interoperability. An important part of this is the data landscape, where functionality is accessed through APIs. In the analysis of this architecture, one aspect is barely touched upon: The Access aspect is not appropriately co-developed. Given the requirements that the government places on the provision of information (such as the Digital Government Act, AVG, Security), this can at least be called remarkable.

SonicBee and the Municipality of The Hague has performed a proof of architecture (the POA) to demonstrate that it is possible to unlock an existing API in which access is not explicitly modeled. This is done in an effective and efficient way through innovative ‚zero trust architecture‘ concepts, such as Policy Based Access Control. Security and privacy are thus demonstrably realized in accordance with legal requirements. The POA proves that this is technically possible and opens doors for municipalities for interoperability in an autonomous and secure way.

During the presentation at One Conference the working principles from the developments in the field of Identity & Access Management are explained and how these principles can be applied in practice in an existing application landscape.

About the authors

André Koot
IAM strategis, Chief Evangelist

andre.koot@sonicbee.nl

André Koot is principal IAM consultant and co-founder of SonicBee. He has over 25 years of experience in the Cyber Security domain, of which the last 20 years he has been specifically focused on Identity and Access Management. He is an absolute top expert in this field, internationally recognized. André makes an active contribution to the IAM domain, among other things in his roles as: Board member Cloud security alliantie NL chapter, Member IDPro commission and member of the advisory board of Identity.Next. 

Jan Verbeek
Senior Lead Architect, Gemeente Den Haag / Common Ground

Jan is a Senior Business / IT architect with a very wide experience in the IT Sector both national and international. Jan is an expert in the translation of business issues in IT Solutions and can do well at both decision-making level (CTO be Informed, CEO CognitionConcept) and operating level

About SonicBee

SonicBee is the Identity and Access management (IAM) company providing innovative and intelligent managed services and business consultancy to make businesses faster, smarter and more secure. We ensure that everything and everyone within your environment can access information in a safe, compliant and smart way.

We challenge the existing market by looking at identities and data in a new way. SonicBee provides managed services, advisory services and trainings focused on increasing our society’s cyber security and creating business value.